The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart sits a couple of blocks south of Wat Si Saket and is the seat of the Vicariate Apostolic of Vientiane. It is a modest, white-washed church in the French colonial style, with twin bell towers and a small forecourt. Around two thousand Catholics in the city worship here, mostly Lao but with a few diplomats and foreign residents.
Mass is held in Lao and French. Even if you are not religious, the contrast between the cathedral and the temples around it is striking — a reminder that Vientiane was the capital of French Laos until 1953, and that small Catholic communities remain across what is otherwise a Theravada Buddhist country.